Even if I felt something just doesn’t add up, I just can’t seem to put my finger on it, so the Roxas August TV ads news came and went without me giving a damn. Why? Because I don't really subscribe to half-baked truths.

Then follow-up reports came in. Oh, boy.

This is the part where I tell myself to calm down and examine the situation objectively, so let’s do just that.

I would like to warn the reader that this is much longer than the usual Thinking Pinoy article, but I assure you that your ten-or-so minutes will be time well spent.

₱774 million does not even include the expenses he incurs during out-of-town events, where he gives out motorcycles and bags of food to all attendees. This does not include the gargantuan costs of running his fleet of private jets that he uses to transport his entire team from province to province. It also does not include the online ad spending: I check my Facebook wall everyday and sponsored Roxas-Robredo ads – run through Roxas’ official page – pop up left and right.

Roxas SALN vis-a-vis Election Spending Spree

Roxas 2014 Statement of Assets, Liabilities, and Net Worth (SALN) indicates a net worth of ₱ 202 million, according to the Inquirer. No other details were made public about his 2014 SALN declaration.

TV 5 was somehow able to secure a copy of Roxas’ 2012 SALN that showed a net worth of ₱ 183.1 million, approximately 10% less than the 2014 figure.

In this 2012 SALN, Roxas stated that his cash and time deposits in 2012 were ₱ 9.5 million. Even if the ₱ 19 million increase from 2012 to 2014 was in pure cash, it still won’t allow him to afford this degree of election spending.

Even in the extreme scenario where he liquidated all his assets, there’s no way ₱ 202 million can pay for ₱ 257 million in TV ads, let alone that ₱774 million figure that he purportedly spent from January to December 2015.

Roxas cannot “use his own money” because according to Roxas SALN, even if he’s one of the richest cabinet members, the kind of election spending he’s doing is on an entirely different level.

With this said, it’s safe to say that he relied heavily on campaign donors, and this leads to the next question: who are his donors?

That is, Thinking Pinoy asks: What kinds of people are funding Roxas’ ascent into the presidency?

Roxas and the Mining Industry

A closer look at Roxas’ 2012 SALN shows that Roxas has a personal interest in the mining sector. His stockholdings, officially amounting to ₱ 120 million, include shares in seven mining companies, namely:

Lepanto Consolidated Mining Company,

Manila Mining Corporation,

Philex Mining Corporation,

Marinduque Mining and Industrial Corporation,

Mindanao Mother Lake Mines,

Samar Mining Company,

Western Minolco Corporation.

Being a stockholder in these seven wealthy firms indicate that he should have a lot of wealthy friends and wealthy acquaintances in the mining industry. And when in a pinch, such as when he needs campaign contributions, wouldn’t it be reasonable to say that his group of wealthy friends would be the first ones he’ll run to?

Thinking Pinoy had no way of verifying who among these miner friends are helping Roxas fulfill his presidential ambitions.

I needed leads. Luckily, the Philippine Star’s Jarius Bondoc gave me just that.

Roxas and his Campaign Planes

Bondoc of the Philippine Star reported Friday that private Cessna planes Roxas uses for his campaign sorties are wrapped in various anomalies. The aircraft are registered under Air Juan Aviation Inc., owned by a certain Francis Eric Gutierrez. These planes are also used to fly VP candidate Leni Robredo and the Liberal Party (LP) senatorial lineup.

A 2013 PCIJ report showed the billionaire Gutierrez is 2013’s 87th highest taxpayer in the country.

To give the reader an idea of Gutierrez’s net worth, GMA Network’s Jimmy Duavit is 83rd and SM Prime Holding’s Henry Sy Sr. is 85th. Their corresponding tax returns differ by less than a million pesos.

Bondoc’s sources said that the planes comprising the Air Juan fleet were acquired with VAT and import duty exemptions, privileges that were never given any other aviation company.

Signed for Finance Secretary Cesar Purisima by Usec. Carlo Carag, the tax exemptions were granted on the basis “that said importation is necessary in the operation of its business.”

If we go by that logic, jeepney drivers should also be exempted from VAT on diesel, right? After all, diesel is necessary in the operation of a jeepney business.

But no, lowly jeepney drivers won’t be exempted. As to why, it’s best to ask Purisima.

Then came the lead I was looking for: Bondoc cited Gutierrez’s illegal mining activities in Mindanao. Bondoc explained how Gutierrez skirted tough laws to exploit the rich nickel ore reserves of Tubay, Agusan del Norte.

With the “small scale” tag, SR Metals was able to bypass severe environmental and legal restrictions imposed on large scale mining operations.

Small scale miners are allowed to extract no more than 50,000 metric tons of ore annually, as opposed to large scale miners that are given higher limits, albeit with more financial, legal, and bureaucratic restrictions.

However, using Google maps and zooming a bit further into the yellow area reveals several intriguing objects:

Small scale mining is supposed to rely mainly on manual labor, but SRMI's Tubay Mine appears to rely on heavy equipment and facilities commonly found in large-scale mining operations. Clockwise from Top-left: an excavator; an office building or a processing facility;three tailings ponds; a convoy of dump trucks; another dump truck; yet another pair of dump trucks.

Eventually, DENR ordered the closure of the three mining sites in 2006. The agency also ordered the collection of ₱7 million in fines, or 0.25% of ₱ 2.9 billion that SRMI earned in 2006-2007, a mere slap on the wrist.

Some reports indicate that SRMI earned ₱ 29 billion instead of ₱ 2.9 billion, but to give SRMI the benefit of the doubt, let’s just consider the smaller amount.

PNoy and Mining

For example, MGB reported that for the year 2014, SRMI paid ₱45.3 million in royalties to Tubay’s Lumads, representing 1% of SRMI’s total mining review for that fiscal year. That is, SRMI 2014 revenues from their Tubay site were at ₱4.53 billion. The 2014 market rate was US$ 41 per ton. Using the Jan 2 2014 USD:PHP exchange rate of 1:44.49, ₱ 4.53 billion translates to about 2.48 million tons of ore mined in 2014.

Again, that’s almost 50 times the 50,000-ton annual limit for small-scale miners.

Moreover, in 2012, while the Lumads (David) battle SRMI (Goliath), President Noynoy Aquino issued Executive Order (EO) No. 79, which forbids granting of new large-scale mining contracts, pending the passing of a new law that would overhaul revenue sharing of revenue between mining companies and the government.

The caveat: As of May 2015, Congress, dominated by the Liberal Party, has yet to conduct a single hearing on this mining bill.

EO 79 covers only new mines, and not the old ones. That is, contracts held by SRMI, along with the contracts held by Roxas’ mining companies, were left untouched. Hence, this EO allowed existing mining companies to collectively hold a de facto monopoly on because of the lack of new competition.

Again, quid pro quo: SRMI is an avid supporter of the PNoy administration from start to finish.

In 2010, then-Presidential candidate Noynoy Aquino used a Gutierrez-owned plane for his campaign sorties, said Bondoc.

In 2012, Rappler reported that Gutierrez accompanied President Aquino in his official 2012 US and UK trips, where he was included in the group of “Top 26 Filipino businessmen” that comprised official Philippine delegation.

In 2013, Former PCDSPO Secretary Ricky Carandang, who served the PNoy administration, was reported to have plans of becoming the Head of Corporate Communications for either one of Gutierrez’s companies after his resignation from his cabinet-level position in 2013, according to The Manila Times. A recent report suggests that Carandang currently works for Air Juan.

In 2014, aerial footage of SunChamp’s Batangas farm was captured using a Gutierrez-owned helicopter, according to the United Nationalist’s Alliance. The footage was used in the senate hearings concerning corruption allegations against Vice-President Jejomar Binay.

And here came 2016, when Gutierrez leased his entire Air Juan fleet to Roxas and the rest of Daang Matuwid.

Former Cabinet Sec. Ricky Carandang, now reportedly working for Air Juan, a Gutierrez-owned company.

First, Roxas runs on a platform of continuity, i.e. he's bent on preserving the new status quo created by the PNoy administration. Roxas has never criticized PNoy’s decisions, and this includes EO 79. In a Roxas presidency, there is no reason to speculate the reversal of EO 79. Coupled with chronic absenteeism in Congress, we can expect the mining monopoly to last until 2022.

In particular, despite falling nickel prices in the past few years, this monopoly will come in handy as nickel prices are expected to shoot up after Indonesia decided to implement a nationwide export ban on mineral products. Bloomberg says this is great news for Philippine nickel miners like SRMI.

Second, Roxas isn't likely to pass FOI. LP has never been able to pass Freedom of Information (FOI) under PNoy and there’s no reason to believe that Roxas, who’s weaker than Aquino, will manage to rally congress to pass this during his term. Roxas and PNoy dropped FOI like a hot potato as soon as Congress insisted on the right of reply provision. They didn't fight for it. They didn't even certify it as urgent.

This way, the common people, including citizen journalists like Thinking Pinoy, will still find it extremely difficult to discover anomalies like SRMI’s Tubay operations. For example, it took Thinking Pinoy several days of research for this article. If FOI existed, Thinking Pinoy could have just requested documents from the SEC, the MGB, the BIR, Customs, and every other related government agency and consequently write a more detailed, more authoritative report. But it isn’t the case.

Third, the final version of the Bangsamoro Basic Law (BBL) is morely likely to favor SRMI and Friends under a Roxas presidency. Under the original version of BBL, the Bangsamoro government will have jurisdiction over mining permits in their area (House Bill 4994, Art. V, Sec. 3, Item 29). This doesn’t sit well with SRMI and Friends whose owners hail from either Luzon or the Visayas.

The ARMM has significant oil and natural gas reserves. Major deposits have been discovered in Liguasan Marsh in Central Mindanao, and various points in the the Sulu Sea. Of course, Guttierez and friends want a stake in that, and of the four presidentiables, LP’s Roxas is their best shot.

UPDATE:As pointed out by one of my readers, Bayan Muna's Rep. Zarate of the Makabayan Bloc is not administration stalwart. Zarate is one of the solons who had raised banners of protest inside the House during the SONA. Zarate was also one of the first to ask for Roxas's resignation from the DILG, and said it was a matter of delicadeza especially as there was speculation on where he is getting campaign funds. Article content has been corrected to reflect this clarification.

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